Scottish Americans20-25 million[1][2][3][4]Up to 8.3% of the U.S. populationScotch-Irish Americans27 to 30 million[5][6]Up to 10% of the U.S. population5,827,046 (Self-reported only, 2008)
1.9% of the total U.S. population[7]

In the 2009 US Community Census Survey, 6.85 million Americans self-identified as having solely Scottish ancestry. 27.5 million Americans reported Scottish ancestry either alone, or in combination with another nationality. Although the northern states have a healthy population of Scottish-Americans, the majority of those claiming Scottish descent reside in southern states such as North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

American bluegrass and folk music styles have roots in the Appalachian ballad culture of Scottish Americans and the Scotch-Irish.

There has also been a long tradition of influences between Scottish American and African American communities. Psalm-singing and gospel music are a mainstay of African American churchgoers. The great influx of Scots Presbyterians into the Carolinas introduced African slaves to this form of worship.[23] The style of gospel-singing was also influenced by Scottish Gaelic-speaking settlers from the Western Isles, particularly North Uist. Scottish Gaelic psalm-singing, or "precenting the line" as it is technically known, in which the psalms are called out and the congregation sings a response, was the earliest form of congregational singing adopted by Africans in America.[23]

The first foreign tongue spoken by some slaves in America was Scottish Gaelic picked up from Gaelic-speakers from the Western Isles.[23] In a North Carolina newspaper dated about 1740, an advertisement offers a generous reward for the capture and return of a runaway African slave who is described as being easy to identify because he only spoke Gaelic.[24] In one church in Alabama the African American congregation worshiped in Gaelic as late as 1918, another indication of the extent to which the Highlanders and Islanders spread their culture, from North Carolina to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.[25]

The Scotch-Irish, who had already begun to settle beyond the Proclamation Line in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, were drawn into rebellion as war spread to the frontier.[31] Tobacco plantations and independent farms in the backcountry of Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas had been financed with Scottish credit, and indebtedness was an additional incentive for separation.[18]

Uncle Sam is the national personification of the United States, and sometimes more specifically of the American government, with the first usage of the term dating from the War of 1812. The American icon Uncle Sam, who embodies the American spirit more than any other figure, was in fact based on a real man. A businessman from Troy, New York, Samuel Wilson, whose parents sailed to America from Greenock, Scotland, has been officially recognized as the original Uncle Sam. He provided the army with beef and pork in barrels during the War of 1812. The barrels were prominently labeled "U.S." for the United States, but it was jokingly said that the letters stood for "Uncle Sam." Soon, Uncle Sam was used as shorthand for the federal government.

Trade with Scotland continued to flourish after independence. The tobacco trade was overtaken in the nineteenth century by the cotton trade, with Glasgow factories exporting the finished textiles back to the United States on an industrial scale.[34]

Emigration from Scotland peaked in the nineteenth century, when more than a million Scots left for the United States,[35] taking advantage of the regular Atlantic steam-age shipping industry which was itself largely a Scottish creation,[36] contributing to a revolution in transatlantic communication.[19]

Scottish emigration to the United States followed, to a lesser extent, during the twentieth century, when Scottish heavy industry declined.[37] This new wave peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, contributing to a hard life for many who remained behind. Many qualified workers emigrated overseas, a part of which, established in Canada, later went on to the United States.[38]

Software giant Microsoft was co-founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, who owed his start in part to his mother, the Scottish American businesswoman Mary Maxwell Gates, who helped her son to get his first software contract with IBM.[42] Glasgow-born Microsoft employee Richard Tait helped to develop the Encarta encyclopedia and co-created the popular board gameCranium.[42]

The Annual Tartan Week celebrations come to life every April with the largest celebration taking place in New York City. Thousands descend onto the streets of the Big Apple to celebrate their heritage, culture and the impact of the Scottish Americans in America today.

Hundreds of pipers, drummers, Highland dancers, Scottie Dogs and celebrities march down the streets drowned in their family tartans and Saltire flags whilst interacting with the thousands of onlookers.

NYC is not the only large city to celebrate Tartan Day, there is also large events that take place in Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, California, Chicago, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Québec, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of Scots from Scotland, and Scotch-Irish from the north of Ireland arrived in the American colonies. The province of Nova Scotia, Canada, was the main concentration of Scottish Gaelic speakers in North America (Nova Scotia is Latin for New Scotland). According to the 2000 census, 1,610 people speak Scottish Gaelic at home.[53]

The number of Americans of Scottish descent today is estimated to be 20 to 25 million[1][2][3][4] (up to 8.3% of the total US population), and Scotch-Irish, 27 to 30 million[5][6] (up to 10% of the total US population), the subgroups overlapping and not always distinguishable because of their shared ancestral surnames.

In the 2000 census, 4.8 million Americans self-reported Scottish ancestry, 1.7% of the total US population. Another 4.3 million self-reported Scotch-Irish ancestry, for a total of 9.2 million Americans self-reporting some kind of Scottish descent. According to American Community Survey in 2008 data, Americans self-reporting Scottish ancestry made up an estimated 1.9% of the total U.S. population. Self-reported Scottish and Scotch-Irish ancestry represented 3.1% of the U.S. population in 2008.[7]

Self-reported numbers are regarded by demographers as massive under-counts, because Scottish ancestry is known to be disproportionately under-reported among the majority of mixed ancestry,[54] and because areas where people reported "American" ancestry were the places where, historically, Scottish and Scotch-Irish Protestants settled in America (that is: along the North American coast, Appalachia, and the Southeastern United States). Scottish Americans descended from nineteenth-century Scottish immigrants tend to be concentrated in the West, while others in New England are the descendants of immigrants from the Maritime Provinces of Canada, especially in the 1920s.

Americans of Scottish descent outnumber the population of Scotland, where 4,459,071 or 88.09% of people identified as ethnic Scottish in the 2001 Census.[54][55]

11th President, 1845-49: His ancestors were among the first Ulster-Scots settlers, emigrating from Coleraine in 1680 to become a powerful political family in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He moved to Tennessee and became its governor before winning the presidency.[61]

15th President, 1857-61: Born in a log cabin (which has been relocated to his old school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania), 'Old Buck' cherished his origins: "My Ulster blood is a priceless heritage". The Buchanans were originally from Deroran, near Omagh in County Tyrone where the ancestral home still stands.[61]

18th President, 1869-77: The home of his maternal great-grandfather, John Simpson, at Dergenagh, County Tyrone, is the location for an exhibition on the eventful life of the victorious Civil War commander who served two terms as President. Grant visited his ancestral homeland in 1878.[7]

21st President, 1881-85: His election was the start of a quarter-century in which the White House was occupied by men of Ulster-Scots origins. His family left Dreen, near Cullybackey, County Antrim, in 1815. There is now an interpretive centre, alongside the Arthur Ancestral Home, devoted to his life and times.[61][62]

22nd and 24th President, 1885-89 and 1893-97: Born in New Jersey, he was the maternal grandson of merchant Abner Neal, who emigrated from County Antrim in the 1790s. He is the only president to have served non-consecutive terms.[61]

23rd President, 1889-93: His mother, Elizabeth Irwin, had Ulster-Scots roots through her two great-grandfathers, James Irwin and William McDowell. Harrison was born in Ohio and served as a brigadier general in the Union Army before embarking on a career in Indiana politics which led to the White House.[61][63]

25th President, 1897-1901: Born in Ohio, the descendant of a farmer from Conagher, near Ballymoney, County Antrim, he was proud of his ancestry and addressed one of the national Scotch-Irish congresses held in the late 19th century. His second term as president was cut short by an assassin's bullet.[61][64]

28th President, 1913-21: His Scottish maternal grandparents, Rev. Dr Thomas Woodrow and Marion Williamson, emigrated to America in the 1830s. Throughout his career he reflected on the influence of his ancestral values on his constant quest for knowledge and fulfillment.[61]

^ abJames Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), front flap: 'More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England's Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland.' ISBN 0-7679-1688-3

^Northern Ireland Tourist Board. discovernorthernireland - explore more: Arthur Cottage Accessed 03/03/2010. "Arthur Cottage, situated in the heart of County Antrim, only a short walk from the village of Cullybackey is the ancestral home of Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st President of the USA."

1 Poles came to the United States legally as Austrians, Germans, Prussians or Russians throughout the 19th century, because from 1772-1795 till 1918, all Polish lands had been partitioned between imperial Austria, Prussia (a protoplast of Germany) and Russia until Poland regained its sovereignty in the wake of World War I.